Pennies
by RinnySega
Summary: A young pup trying to find his mother ends up finding someone else.


His nose led him to pennies—moldy, old pennies that scattered the alleyway behind the chemical plant, just outside the county border—ones that were probably lost long ago by a wandering janitor on his way home to a family, or maybe a teenager taking a shortcut to school from the gas station by the worker's union. Either way, these old bits of history and forgotten scraps kept him going as his weak and weary stubs of legs continued their journey, leading him to more and more…useless pennies.

He stopped and turned back, sniffing at the air, his eyes still too delicate to open. He missed the smell of his mother, her warm fur that kept him and his brothers safe from the world she brought them into. He felt protected going to sleep against her one night, pushed away by the much stronger legs of his siblings to her underside of her tail, only to wake up to cold mist and the absence of their scent, thinking they might have been gone all night. Still determined, he whimpered and followed through the trail of coins, tail tucked between his legs as he lingered very briefly on each one to sniff. They smelled like what he'd grown accustomed to, and he wondered if he followed them, in due time they would lead him to his family. He kept his pursuit.

All day the small pup traveled. From the chemical plant to the suburbs, to the city limit where by then his nose had become overwhelmed. The sounds frightened him into ending his search that evening, his feet blistered and hurting from pushing his new muscles to their breaking point. He howled and whined, seeking shelter in a small box he sniffed out just outside a pizza parlor. The pup curled up inside, whimpering and making tiny howls, hoping his mother, his whole world, was listening and would come to his side, proud of him for what he'd done.

But his whines were heard by something of a different nature, that of hungry dogs that had grown up in this strange and dangerous world he found himself in, those beasts lured to the box by the cries of the lost. Silent for only a moment, he heard the growls, the snarls, the nails tapping on the cement as menacing, black snouts sniffed out the weary beagle inside. At first his small white ears perked, wondering if this could have been his mother coming to his rescue, but the smell was of something more foreign and malicious.

Without warning he was pushed over by the snout of a Doberman and toppled again when his shaking legs tried to make him get a move on and find refuge elsewhere. He whined again, feeling sharp teeth grab hold of the fur of his ankle to pull him out into the cool air, his skin dragging on the rough ground as he was taken from his shelter. He had been dragged to the center of a ring of them, each one snarling and frightening the poor pup with low growls and snorting nostrils that came from all directions—hot breath, dripping warm saliva, wet mud and a putrid reek like that of one hundred more pennies. He whined and howled some more, the distress clear in his cries, hoping his mother was listening and would save him from the terror that drowned him out.

Although it wasn't his mother, there was someone there who heard.

A moment later the dogs scrambled after a crashing sound near the back of the alley, leaving the pup alone and bruised after one large mutt of a bulldog tripped over him on his way out of the street. Then he shivered in fear as two hands plucked him from the ground, lifting him up just a foot or so from the ground.

The beagle whined and whined, louder and louder, until his sharp, puppy whimpers beginning to sound more like human consonants and vowels. But it soon subsided as a warm scarf was wrapped around him to calm him down, and calm him down it did. When the familiar warmth hit his senses, he melted into the wool and opened his eyes for the first time, staring up at a pair of thick, round glasses placed on a red-haired human boy.

"Mr. Peabody?" the boy said. "Is that you?"

The pup shivered, staring a confused, emotionless glance at him through tired eyes before closing them again to relax, feeling all too weary to distrust this creature that smelled like lemongrass, although he didn't know what the scent was. All he knew was it was not the scent of pennies.

"This is the only place I could think of to find you," the boy continued as he took him away, "And I've been waiting here forever to see if I could find your mom, but so far only you've shown up in a box with those dogs…" The boy sighed as he sat down on a bench near the street, setting the pup in his lap. "I'm sorry Mr. Peabody. I really wanted to give you a good birthday present this year. I thought maybe finding out where your family could be was a good idea..then again I'm not the best with good ideas, huh?" He scratched him behind the ears and the dog sighed a quiet yet still recognizable, human sigh.

"This was a bad decision. I'm sorry." The boy stood again and carried the dog across the street to the pound. "But at least you're home right? This is where you told me you grew up. Oh." There was a pause as he read the sign. "Looks like they open up in about a couple hours it says on the door…here." The boy sat down on another bench and pulled out a small booklet on Susan B Anthony. "They handed this out at school today, and I forgot to share it with you when I got home. It's really neat, it tells you all about Susan B. Anthony and why the school's named after her. Maybe after your birthday we can visit there sometime. We're going over Elizabeth Stanton next week so it might be a good idea to get an idea about the course…"

The boy droned on and on, in a language he could understand, but only barely. The voice was soothing, comforting him in its own way, but all the pup could do was drift to sleep, a small wag in his tail that he finally found his warmth again, and maybe even his name.


End file.
